Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma

WINTERS, CA — In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of one of the largest studies ever conducted to assess the relationship between childhood trauma and adult well-being. Over the course of two years, 17,000 individuals underwent physical examinations and answered a multitude of questions about their family history. Was a biological parent ever lost through divorce or abandonment? Did...

Collaborative investigations for a Colorado ski town

ASPEN, COLORADO — Aspen is one of the few small cities in America that has competing daily newspapers--the Aspen Daily News and The Aspen Times. But after the economic recession in 2008, both papers were forced to severely trim their staff and resources, leading one local journalist to question the future of journalism in the Colorado community of around 60,000...

Investigations and other news for California's Central Coast

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA — With major newspapers cutting investigative departments around the country, including along the Central Coast of California, Karen Velie and Dan Blackburn were concerned that major stories would go uncovered. In late 2007, the pair of veteran newspaper reporters launched their own online outlet focused on just the type of journalism they felt was lacking--hard news and investigations. Initially, Velie...

A watchdog for the Golden State

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — In less than two years, California Watch has become a force in American journalism, distributing its content to over eighty different publications and operating with the biggest investigative team in the state. Launched in 2009 as a facet of the Center for Investigative Reporting, California Watch dedicates itself to "high-impact reporting" on health, education, ecology, politics, and public safety....

Old-school investigative nonprofit takes to the web

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — In the world of American investigative nonprofits, the Center for Investigative Reporting is the oldest and one of the best recognized. Founded in 1977 by a small group of investigative reporters, CIR has grown considerably since, amassing numerous awards. It now employs a full-time staff of twenty and works with an annual budget of over $4 million. CIR has broken stories...

Far-reaching niche investigations for the Nutmeg State

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT — In 2010, award-winning journalist Lisa Chedekel published a story detailing how more than a dozen Connecticut doctors who had been sanctioned in other states for illegal or substandard practices were able to practice freely in Connecticut. She found that Connecticut rarely took action against doctors, even when their licenses had been censured in other states. When published in December...

News and investigations from within ultra-orthodox Judaism

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA — A few days after a team of Navy SEALS killed Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden, Shmarya Rosenberg, whose website FailedMessiah.com is perhaps the Internet's only English-language news source devoted to news from the insular world of ultra-orthodox Judaism, received a tip from one of his readers in Brooklyn. The reader had e-mailed him a scanned picture from a Yiddish-language...

Consumer-oriented investigative journalism

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — As the Los Angeles Times newsroom braced itself for another round of buyouts in 2008, Myron Levin, an investigative reporter who had tracked corporate misconduct and lax government regulation for the paper for years, thought hard about what he wanted to do with his career. He took a few walks around the block, talked it over with some colleagues, and then finally...

A pioneer bilingual investigative nonprofit

MIAMI, FLORIDA — When the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR) received a $100,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in September of 2010, it marked the launch of Florida's first nonprofit bilingual online investigative reporting organization. Located at the International Media Center at Florida International University, FCIR is emerging as a leader in investigative news and an innovator...

Reinventing the homicide beat for the digital age

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — Mico Briscoe. Black. Male. 18. Shot on November 26, 2011. Marcellus J. Darnaby, aka "Boom." Black. Male. 32. Shot on June 15, 2011. Lucki Nancy Pannell. Black. Female. 18. Shot on February 19, 2011. These are just a few of the 152 homicides currently listed on HomicideWatchDC.org. In the coming...

Colorado investigative journalism with statewide import and local impact

DENVER, COLORADO — On December 16, 2010, Laura Frank, the executive director of I-News (formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network), delivered her commencement speech for the University of Colorado's soon-to-be-defunct journalism school. Frank was optimistic about the future of the industry: "I now recognize you actually are embarking on this adventure at one of the most exciting times - perhaps...

Environment news and investigations

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — After experimenting with a variety of quick-hit approaches to environmental coverage, a four-year-old online news startup focused on climate change is moving in a slower, more involved reportorial direction. Originally launched in 2007 as SolveClimate News, the site announced on September 6, 2011 that it had hired an executive editor, Susan White, and changed its name to InsideClimate...

Investigative journalism for the Pacific Northwest

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — Seattle's InvestigateWest may have a small budget and a tiny newsroom--but the organization's impact consistently belies its size. Founded in 2009, the small investigative nonprofit led by former Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffer Rita Hibbard has emerged as a major player in regional journalism, reporting on everything from chronic homelessness to the widespread poisoning of children by rat poison....

Investigative journalism for San Diego and beyond

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — Investigative editor Lorie Hearn does it all. She runs the business, raises the funds, edits the stories, does the books, and dusts the office. She even brings the bagels and cream cheese. Hearn, a former editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, now leads Investigate Newsource, formerly known as The Watchdog Institute, a three-person nonprofit investigative outlet run out of San...

Multimedia reporting in a university setting

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop is one of sixteen university-based investigative journalism centers, but the only one in the nation's capital. Founded in 2008 by Charles Lewis and Wendell Cochran, both veteran journalists and professors at the university, the Workshop produces original reporting and mentors the next generation of investigative journalists. This dual mandate creates a unique newsroom; undergraduate...

Twenty years' worth of investigative journalism for the public welfare

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — The Center for Public Integrity celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2010 with a YouTube video detailing its many accomplishments. The organization has won more than forty national journalism awards, pursued more than seventy major investigative projects, published sixteen books, and, perhaps most significantly, has been cited in print and electronic media more than 15,000 times. Now, the...

A print startup's bold online muckracking operation

GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA — The purpose of Journal Watchdog, an online news site launched in January of 2009 and based in Greenville, South Carolina, couldn't be any clearer: on the site's "About Us" page, the words "We are a watchdog website" are emblazoned in bold, twenty-four-point font, with a link to a page containing salaries of various state employees positioned just a couple inches...

Filling the reporting gap in Maine's state capital

HALLOWELL, MAINE — As the number of reporters covering Maine state government dropped from twenty in 1989 to fewer than ten today, a wife-and-husband duo, two old-school reporters, stepped up. In 2010, Naomi Schalit, a former reporter and producer at Maine Public Radio, and John Christie, former president and publisher of Central Maine Newspapers, launched the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, a watchdog...

A one-man investigative unit in the heartland

PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KANSAS — If you head to the "leadership" page of the website for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting you will see profiles of an impressively large Board of Directors. There are professors and consultants and attorneys, all smiling into camera alongside slabs of striking qualifications. Under the heading "staff," though, you will find just one name: Mike Sherry. Sherry,...

Think tank-funded investigations for the Cornhusker State

LAVISTA, NEBRASKA — Nebraska Watchdog, which launched in September 2009 with longtime newsman Joe Jordan as its sole employee, is a one-man shop focusing on investigative and statehouse news in the Cornhusker State. The site is part of a network of sites around the country that share the Watchdog name. Jordan spent twenty-nine years as a political and investigative reporter for KMTV CBS in Omaha,...

Hard-hitting investigations in and around the Boston area

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — In less than two years and with an annual budget of less than $500,000, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has taken on the state division of banks and the Salvation Army. They've brought down a high-level public official, and had their work appear in publications across the state and in every medium imaginable. And they've...

The web's best-known muckraker

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — In the world of investigative nonprofit news organizations, ProPublica is a giant. Its staff of nineteen reporters has broken big stories on everything from the lax supervision of British Petroleum to the dangers of drilling for natural gas. Founded in 2007 by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor...

A government watchdog for the Lone Star State

HOUSTON, TEXAS — The audience that reads Texas Watchdog's reporting may not be familiar with the news site or the organization behind it, but that's okay by TW. "Being online, half our visitors, quite frankly, don't know who Texas Watchdog is, and they don't care who Texas Watchdog is," says Trent Seibert, the site's founder and editor-in-chief. All that matters is the quality...

An investigative reporter in the Texas capital

AUSTIN, TEXAS — In January of 2011, Ken Martin, the founder, editor, and publisher of The Austin Bulldog, an independent nonprofit investigative news website, got a tip from a prospective Austin city council candidate that council members were holding private meetings. The Texas Open Meetings Act prohibits private meetings for the purpose of deliberating on public business. And yet, on four...

Legislative watchdogging and more

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — [UPDATE:The Florida Independent was closed by its parent, the American Independent News Network, on April 27, 2011, just before the site's second birthday. CJR's detailed profile of AINN's refocusing on a national audience after shutting down all but one of its state sites can be found here.] Launched in May 2010 with a $352,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, <a href="http://floridaindependent.com/"...

Investigative reporting on The Big Easy

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — Launched in January 2010, The Lens is an eight-person nonprofit investigative news website partnered with weekly papers and a local television station in New Orleans. The site aims to fill the gaps that are no longer being covered by New Orleans's cash-strapped traditional news operations. Right now, The Lens's goal is to produce big, investigative stories every two weeks, and...

Accountability journalism from recent Columbia J-School alums

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Last October 18, the day The New York World went live with a mission to expand journalism education and hold local and state governments accountable, editor Alyssa Katz posted a story by World reporter Sasha Chavkin about a private bus line in Brooklyn that ran a city bus route under a franchise agreement. Despite being open...

The first university-based investigative nonprofit

WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS — In 2004, former Washington Post reporter Florence Graves founded The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, thereby creating the very first university-based investigative nonprofit. In less than seven years, The Schuster Institute has snatched up more than ten awards and had its work published everywhere from Foreign Policy to Good Housekeeping. It is also one of the few American...

A catalyst for investigative reporting in Boston and beyond

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — Watchdog New England, the website of the nonprofit Initiative for Investigative Reporting at Northeastern University, aims to revive and strengthen investigative reporting throughout New England's six states--not as a news outlet in its own right, but as an ally to the region's more than eighty daily newspapers and countless weeklies. For now, the site primarily exists as a compendium of links to...

Think tank-funded West Virginia political news and investigations

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA — West Virginia Watchdog is a one-man shop focusing on investigative and statehouse news in the Mountain State. The site is part of a network of sites around the country that share the Watchdog name. The Watchdog's sole editorial employee is Steven Allen Adams, who is also a stringer for Reuters and contributes to a Charleston, W.V. entertainment news website called Kanawha...

Investigative reporting for the Badger State

MADISON, WISCONSIN — In just under two years, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has broken over twenty-five major stories, ranging from the increased dependence on immigrant labor in the dairy industry to the stories behind the alarmingly high Native American suicide rates. The two-person team, led by executive director Andy Hall out of an office at the University of...